No Heavy Lifting Required: New York City’s Unambitious School ‘Diversity’ Plan

By Nicole Mader and Ana Carla Sant'Anna Costa

Earlier this month, the New York City Department of Education (DOE) released a long-awaited plan designed to increase diversity in the city’s public schools. (The plan refrained from using the terms “integrated” and “segregated” schools, a decision City officials defended saying that “diversity” is a broader term.) Noteworthy in the plan are two numeric goals the DOE proposes to use as “yardsticks” to measure their progress. Outside observers have celebrated these goals as a “bona-fide breakthrough” and also criticized them for “aim[ing] too low.” But the plan itself lacks sufficient detail and context to make such evaluations.

To fill this data void, the Center for New York City Affairs has crunched the numbers on these yardstick goals, both of which are to be achieved over the next five years:

Increasing by 50,000 the number of students at “racially representative” schools; and

Reducing the number of “economically stratified” schools by 10%.

This report was made possible with generous support from the New York Community Trust, Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation, and the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation.

Nicole Mader is a senior research fellow at the Center for New York City Affairs and a doctoral candidate in public and urban policy at the Milano School of Management, International Affairs, and Urban Policy at The New School.

Ana Carla Sant’Anna Costa is a quantitative research assistant at the Center for New York City Affairs and a master’s candidate in nonprofit management at the Milano School of Management, International Affairs, and Urban Policy at The New School.